It's impressive, isn't it, that four of the last seven Illinois governors earned felony convictions and jail time? Rod Blagojevich was today found guilty on 17 of 20 counts. From the Trib:

This marks the second time in less than a year that the 54-year-old Blagojevich, the only Illinois chief executive ever impeached and ousted from office, had been convicted of a crime. The jury at his first trial last summer found him guilty of lying to theFBI, though that panel deadlocked on all the other counts. That impasse set the stage for a retrial.

This time the verdict was unequivocal, with the jury of 11 women and one man finding Blagojevich guilty on 17 criminal counts he faced, including charges of wire fraud, attempted extortion, bribery and conspiracy. The marquee charge in the case involved an attempt by Blagojevich in late 2008 to cash in on his power to name a replacement in the U.S. Senate for newly elected President Barack Obama.

The jury acquitted Blagojevich on one count and deadlocked on two others.

You know, I feel sorry for the guy. He had this thing, and it was f'ing golden...

On the other hand, the guy is dumber than a box of hair. As the Trib drolled: "Blagojevich’s turn on the witness stand, something he had promised to do in his first trial before backing out, proved a double-edged sword. Under cross-examination he came off as a quibbler as a prosecutor drew a bead on his credibility from the very first question: 'You are a convicted liar, correct?' "

I'm not a practicing attorney, but even I could have guessed the government would lead the cross-examination with that question. Hell, the lawyers who advertise on the bus for slip-fall clients could have guessed that. But ol' Blago...wow.

I just realized that today's news comes in time for tonight's Daily Show taping. I can't wait to watch.

A petulant demonstration to the rest of the world that we can't meet the baseline obligation we expect of any two-bit duchy -- that it will face its financial problems and honor its sovereign debt -- would be a big, damaging step in the wrong direction. Good for John Boehner in recognizing that more than his own ambitions are at stake here. If the default actually comes, and markets panic, and interest rates for everything shoot up, keep the courageous Rep. Cantor in mind on that day.

Every once in a while, it would be nice if the Republicans in Congress did their jobs.

Violent storms raked large sections of the Chicago area Tuesday evening, knocking power out to nearly a quarter million Chicago area residents and transforming some thoroughfares into darkened obstacle courses, hard to navigate with streetlights out and debris, ranging from large trees to power poles and garbage cans, impeding if not entirely blocking travel. Police in some of the hardest hit areas were forced to light flares to mark fallen trees.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing transformers exploding at the height of the storms while others described some neighborhoods as "war zones" after the onslaught of storms.

... The storms generated gusts as high as 130 km/h at Wheeling and 120 km/h at Peru, Elmhurst and Wheaton.

I was inside, as you can imagine, as the storms ran over my part of the city, with horizontal rain and, well, lots of wind. At one point I watched the groundskeepers at US Cellular Field blown around as they tried to get the tarp over the infield.

This came from from my old Kodak DC4800, which I mentioned yesterday. Like yesterday's, it looks great on the blog at 500x750, but it doesn't have much more resolution than that, and Adobe Lightroom helped it along a little.

Summer begins today at 12:16 CDT, which is good because I'm tired of this 32°C spring weather.

My objection to the past three months of Chicago weather probably sounds familiar: we've either had too little or too much heat, and during warm afternoons, when someone might want to sit outside and have a beer, we've had instead crashing rain. Today's forecast sounds just like that, too.